Where the Wild Things Are

Today my husband and I went to a movie that was derived from a lovable children's book, Where the Wild Things Are. In fact, I grew up with it in my home and my brother even had a cute little Max in his wolf suit that went along with it. Kel and I have been looking forward to seeing this movie since we saw the previews, because it brought back childhood memories and it actually looked kinda cute. Today we got out a little late and barely missed the beginning of the 12:15 show, so we bought tickets for the 2:50 show and hung out up in White Marsh until then. One of our pass-the-time spots was a Barnes and Noble where we picked up the book and reread it for fun. While we were reading, I kind of wondered how they were going to make a full-length movie about a 30-ish word book. I had faith, though. It was in vain.

The movie started out kinda...crappy. The kid who played Max was cute, though. But Max was portrayed not as a young boy who was naughty one day, but a wild child who probably should have been sent to juvi. He trashed his sister's room, stood on the counter, yelled "FEED ME WOMAN!" at his mother, and then bit her. He wasn't sent to his room like in the book. He ran away, had an exhaustingly long sea voyage, and then found the island. There, he found the wild things. One was trashing the others' homes. He was pissed about something that was happening that was never quite clarified in the movie. Once Max arrived on the island, I kind of started thinking, "okay, now what?"

What happened was this: Max lied and told them he was magic and would explode their heads if they tried to eat him. (In the book he does a magic trick of staring into their yellow eyes without blinking then they make him king) the wild things were all terribly depressed, angry, and rude. They made Max their king and then they all whined about crap. Then stupid repetitive things happened like them running around, jumping, throwing dirt clods at each other and sleeping in a pile. They were all really ornery. As Kelly put it: "All it was was repetitive bickering." It wasn't exactly a feel-good cute children's movie. At all.

They build a fort and everyone was mad and monster-Carol loved monster-KW and KW hid Max inside her stomach (GROSS!) and Carol pulled off monster-Douglas' arm, which was then replaced with a stick. It was not funny. I think the movie can be summed up by the comments I heard in the theatre during the movie: "This is the dumbest movie I've ever seen." "Well, that sucked." "I've had enough of this." "What time is it!?" "Is this thing almost over?" (Okay, I said the last one.) A few futile claps came at the end, but I think it was in relief that we survived the movie. They died down fast. Quite frankly, I hope they put those reviews on the advertisements.

So really, it was a bad influence on children (hey kids, act horrible, bite your parents, run away, and lie a lot. In the end, you'll get cake! Seriously, in the end he was eating not only hot supper, but a huge slice of chocolate cake! You're REWARDING the kid for that?!) it was annoying and repetitive and depressing. I don't go to movies to listen to big stupid things whine and crazy-monster children terrorize their families. So if you want to see a movie based on a cute children's book that you love, Where the Wild Things Are is probably not your best option.

Despite the crappy movie, Kelly and I had a great time waiting for the 2:50 show. We went to Barnes and Noble, a place called Game Workshop that we weren't sure what was in there. It ended up being one of those one places that was full of those miniature game pieces (like Dungeons & Dragons-type-games) and people playing it and stuff. It was absolutely full of pasty guys who really need to see the sun. I think I was the only female they'd seen for quite sometime. Then we went to IKEA and got a garlic press! Woohoo!